Ministry Fatigue

My weekly meeting with Kristy and Christina was cancelled today. In some ways I am okay with that though. Today has definitely been one of those days where I feel overwhelmed. Especially with Extended Play I feel like I have read so much, and there is so much to try and wrap my head around when it comes to young adult ministry. I wonder if young adult ministry is easier in large cities. Maybe then I can attract people easier. But at the same time, I realize that my job is not to attract people, getting a larger and larger crowd for the sake of getting a crowd.

I need to give people a reason to come to Extended Play, and so far it seems like people do not have that. Personally I just want to teach the Bible, but I know people are unfortunately not as interested in the Bible as I am. In talking with Lee and I convinced that people do want to learn, but at the same time they almost need to be tricked into it.

After all, before I came to Epic EP was basically just a fun social time. They played games, they watched movies, they played kickball. All of those things were good, but people stopped coming because those are things they can do on their own time. At the same time, when I first came I started teaching, and people started showing up for a while again. But now the numbers are down again. So it makes me think that we need to do something that people will have fun at but that we can also teach at.

I think back to the best young adult group I was ever a part of. It was the young adult group at my home church in South Dakota. It was actually what got me to start attending the church on Sundays. We met at the young adult pastor’s house on Monday nights and hung out a lot. But then, at some point during the night he would teach a lesson. I do not really remember the lessons that much, but I remember the friendships I made. It makes me wonder if that is what I should be doing instead. Maybe instead of trying to get people to come to the church on Wednesday nights for EP, we should have it at my house. People can come as early or late as they want, hang out for as long as they want and sometime during that I could teach a lesson.

But more than anything, I know I need to return to a serious focus on prayer. I have not spent as much time in prayer as I did when I first started my internship. I feel like it is incredibly easy to get distracted with everything else and forget to start my day with God. I am sure that that more than anything else is the biggest contributing factor to my feeling of overwhelming.